Tag: Oscar winner

In a near future, a lonely writer develops an unlikely relationship with an operating system designed to meet his every need. I like Joaquin Phoenix, as an actor obviously. I know nothing about him really. And I love Amy Adams. I like Scarlett Johansson and think she does a great job here in a difficult […]

Rewatched 19th March 2017 – Originally watched December 2005 [imdb_movie_detail title=”King Kong” detail=”plot”] So before going to see the new King Kong film I figured I may as well take a look at the Peter Jackson version. I remember enjoying it, but don’t think I’ve rewatched it in quite a while. And I still really […]

IMDb ; Metacritic
Micky Ward is the youngest of a large family. All his life he has looked up to his older brother, Dicky, who once knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard in a fight. But Dicky is no longer the “pride of Lowell”, he is now a drug addict who is supposed to be training Micky in his boxing career. He does, however, have the habit of not showing up when he should, and hanging out in crack houses when he should be elsewhere. And now Micky has a chance to make it in the big time, will his family continue to stand in his way?

I was a bit uncertain about this film. It sounded just a bit too heart-warming, as though it’d be full of overly sentimental “and everything works out in the end” stuff that makes me think of the flawed philosophy behind stories such as The Pursuit of Happyness:””:http://www.susanhatedliterature.net/2007/01/18/the-pursuit-of-happyness/, you know the sort of victim blaming that says you wouldn’t be poor if only you tried harder.

Luckily enough this film is not like that. Okay, it has the heart-warming aspect. Heart-warming by the bucket-full. But it is told in such a way that you just can’t help but smile.

It is hard to know how to describe this film. It is more of a character study than a story. Of course there is some plot, an oilman and his desire to suceed, but the story isn’t too important. What is important is the character of Daniel Plainview, as played by Oscar winning Daniel Day-Lewis.

The opening scenes show just how driven Daniel is. We watch him, working on his own, in a mine. No dialogue at all for around 15 minutes, just this man in a hole, digging, dynamiting up the earth, falling down the hole, injured and yet still having the drive to pull himself out of that hole and struggle back into town to get his bit of dirt evaluated.

In 1984 in East Germany the secret police, or Stasi were everywhere, watching everything. This film details the activities of one officer, Wiesler, as he monitored a popular playwright. Wiesler doesn’t believe that Dreyman could possibly be as pro the party as he makes out. Too arrogant. So he suggests keeping him under surveillance, just in case. His superior officer doesn’t agree, at first, but then Minister Bruno Hempf mentions that perhaps he isn’t such a fan, and that perhaps Dreyman isn’t a favourite. It turns out that Hempf is more than interested in Dreyman’s girlfriend, the actress Christa-Maria Sieland, and so would like nothing better than to remove his rival by having him arrested and taken away.

Truman Capote is best known for writing In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and this film deals with the six year it took him to write the true crime novel based on the murder of an entire family in rural Kansas. The film concentrates on Capote, the murders are only important because they are […]

In a way it is a pity that this film has received so much press coverage, it’d be interesting to watch it not knowing what was going to happen between Ennis and Jack. But it is pretty much known as the gay cowboy film by now, so that part of the plot isn’t going to take anyone by surprise. Read more about Brokeback Mountain [based on book] …

Just been to see Master and Commander: The far side of the Ocean and have to say I had a very enjoyable afternoon. Even before the film started I was entertained by the Irish Health Board’s anti-AIDs ad, even if it did elicit some anti-homosexual groans from a a couple of lads up the back […]

I know that I’ve watched some Laurel and Hardy films, they used to be on the telly around Christmas, but to be honest I really couldn’t tell you if they were any good. It was a long long time ago. But Stan & Ollie was getting good reviews and it was on in the cinema […]